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Jonathan Blow is designing his own programming language for game development
- Thread starter freakybj
- Start date
I'm not sure C# could wholesale replace C++ for game development, but I would love that. C# is wonderful.
It's the opposite. It gives you incredible freedom, but as a result, a lot of lower level things that other languages take care of or abstract away you can, and sometimes have to, handle
But the first sentence of his posts states there is no difference in ability between men and women. So swing and a miss for your snark. Unless your joke is that it's going to be so intuitive that a person with no interest could program a game by accident.I hope it's so intuitive that even women can learn it.
Complaining about C++ is almost a performance art in the games industry these days but I have yet to see anyone seriously make inroads into replacing it. I think the situation would have to get a very great deal worse before there was enough momentum built up to start moving off it.
High performance computing still (often) uses FORTRAN and that language practically spits in your face every time you run the compiler. That's how much power inertia has.
High performance computing still (often) uses FORTRAN and that language practically spits in your face every time you run the compiler. That's how much power inertia has.
After this tweet I was done with him. What an idiot.I hope it's so intuitive that even women can learn it.
EDIT: people letting him off the hook because of the first sentence. Like what?
He then continues saying that "biological factors play a large part in interests"...
And I'm aware that his opinion isn't controversial in many fields of medicine/psychology, I've been going to uni. That doesn't make it less idiotic...
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Considering it's meant to be kind of a replacement for C++, I would expect the technical expertise needed to be between it and something like Java or C#, which means newbies are still probably better served with the latter.
If it's supposed to be something simpler to use than Java or C# but with the efficiency and power of C++... well, color me skeptical, for hopefully obvious reasons.
Limiting? The opposite actually, it lets you do pretty much anything you want (for better and for worse). Hard to use? Definitely more than garbage-collected languages built from the ground to be object-oriented, like Java and C#.
The argument of "Removing memory management saves you time if you're a good programmer who doesn't make mistakes (like me, Jonathan Blow)" makes it sound like Blow has never worked on a project with a large number of people.
Dammit, I'm late to the thread and didn't get a chance to post it first. lolI'm nowhere near his level of knowledge but this looks like a case of:
I have a lot of respect for him as a game developer, but as someone who has worked in languages and compilers professionally for going on a decade, and also knows a lot about game development, I'm at least 90% convinced he's wasting his time.
(Like, to be fair, many game developers are -- though it used to be much worse when everyone was cooking their own flimsy scripting language)
Which is not to say that it's all that difficult to improve in C++ in specific aspects. The difficulty is doing that while also keeping up with it in all other aspects, and improving on it by enough of a margin to mitigate the ecosystem, library and tooling drawbacks of any new language.
(Like, to be fair, many game developers are -- though it used to be much worse when everyone was cooking their own flimsy scripting language)
Using C++ effectively is certainly hard. But there are reasons for this difficulty, and any "simple" answer is usually the result of insufficient thought or experience.
Which is not to say that it's all that difficult to improve in C++ in specific aspects. The difficulty is doing that while also keeping up with it in all other aspects, and improving on it by enough of a margin to mitigate the ecosystem, library and tooling drawbacks of any new language.
Implying there are biological reasons for women not having "interests" in programming is also incredibly misogynistic my dude. And also is based on absolutely no compelling evidence
Even more so incredible when computer programming was invented by women, mostly spearheaded by women and considered a "womanly job" until the 60s where dudes realized they could make a lot of money and pushed them out of the profession while now claiming that the reasons there isn't more women in computer science is because of "biology" (and not, you know...the fact that the environment became incredibly toxic and stigmatised for decades now that it is the territory of nerdy men)
On topic: good, i guess ?....the thing with this kind of stuff is that it has to be adopted as a standard and not just be "more convenient", because community will usually boost that. Right now all our projects and my colleagues projects seem to be spearheaded in c#
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This sounds interesting, I'll be curious to see if it gains any use once it is out. I keep seeing languages that try to offer a ~better~ alternative to C++ ending up not having much success, but maybe game devs will find more value in this. Ultimately though, this just seems like the language Blow would like to write in, and if he's got the time to make it all the power to him I guess.
Found a write-up on more of the specifics here if anyone else is curious: https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md
Found a write-up on more of the specifics here if anyone else is curious: https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md
I don't disagree at all, but some of those are really weird choices to list if they're supposed to be examples of unused languages.
I like C# myself, but part of the point of this is to not have any garbage collection (or use a VM at all.)
(thanks, altohugh i just edited because i wrote "dudes could make a lot of women" instead of "money" ...that came out weird)
He says overtly that sexual biology determines interests, implying directly that women are choosing to be less involved in tech fields because of their biology. He then goes on to stick a weird political flag down and dismiss the issue as a meaningless talking point of some fringe, rather than a valid contention. If you can't follow the clear thread of misogyny in that, I can't put it more plainly for you.
This is completely true.
This is half-true. Much of the "programming" at the time was seen -- and in many ways was -- more of a secretarial task of actually generating the physical program, not so much its design aspects. There were incredible early computer scientists of both genders who contributed to what we now consider programming.
I don't agree that this is the primary reason at all.
The primary reason, which affects far more than just programming and extends to all math-heavy engineering disciplines, is a societal issue in how interests are shaped in children and young adults -- and this is perpetuated not just or even primarily by institutions, but also by parents, family, and peer groups.
That it is a broad societal rather than domain-specific (or, for that matter, biological) issue can be seen by e.g. comparing the percentage of women in engineering disciplines between ex-communist eastern European countries and western ones. (Regardless of whatever else we can say about USSR-style communism, it certainly introduced a dramatic leap in gender role equality.
Done with him?
Some of you guys are outrageous. Not every opinion needs to be read, analyzed, processed, and judged. Just scoff and move on.
It's a good point (and really just a better formulation than what I was haphazardly trying to convey), I generally agree. Thanks for the insight
It's not limiting at all. The problem is the opposite. There are so many bloated libs to solve standard issues. If you are good you can either write the standard functionality yourself or at least keep everything clean and simple enough that you are not tripping over declarations and includes constantly.
He makes good games. I've bought Braid and The Witness. And he is a mysagonist. Since his games are kind of personal I choose to not to support him in the future because of this, because I find it exhausting to seperate the artist from his work here. Where is the problem?
Naughty Dog are still using domain-specific languages built on top of Racket (another Lisp) and C++: https://con.racket-lang.org/2013/danl-slides.pdf
I just find this trend of boycotting artists' work ridiculous, that's all. Ultimately the 30 dollars you spend on his next game won't affect his life, and I find it to be unhealthy and unnecessary to burden yourself with the fact that most people are far from perfect.
But to each his own.
-Smarmy comment about how his next game is inventing a programming language that plays with you-
Thanks! I was "forced" so to speak (and a bit miffed at the time) to participate in a lecture/seminar on gender roles in computer science since it was a mandatory part of my PhD program, but when I actually studied the current and historical data it turned out to be a lot more interesting than I had expected.
The most interesting aspect was the east-west pattern across Europe and the huge (positive!) impact the USSR had on this particular issue, which I already mentioned. But there's also, for example, a south-north pattern (with better percentages in the south) which is generally thought to be in a large part due to closer familial ties making it easier to juggle children and a sometimes very time-demanding and somewhat unpredictable work schedule. The same difference is observed between northern countries with better and worse public childcare provisions. It really gives you an idea of how far some aspects of how a society is structured reach.
Because 1) a ridiculous number of their men were killed in WWII, and 2) everybody was so poor that both parents had to work. Things were still ludicrously backwards and up until the Iron Curtain fell Soviet women not only had to work a full time job but were still responsible for nearly all of the household work that had to be done, often without the benefits of washing machines and other appliances that were commonplace in the west. More women working had nothing to do with anyone's opinion on gender roles and everything to do with the fact that anybody not working was considered gutter trash, if that.
For the USSR's actual opinion on gender equality, consider: When the Bolsheviks took over they closed all but one women's university (and they only left that one open because they were afraid that if women could not get an education in Russia, they would go elsewhere in Europe and be exposed to dangerous Western ideas). And there were far fewer high-profile Soviet women than in the west, and they had an alarming tendency to commit suicide under suspicious circumstances.
I never said the word 'boycot". I personally wouldn't be able to enjoy his work. That's all. Though, I find it a bit troubling to just "scoff and move on" when we are confronted with statements like his, I have to say.
Aside from the part where you're interjecting among people talking about a topic, to tell those people they should stop talking about caring about it. Maybe consider taking your own advice. A discussion thread is probably the wrong place to advocate for not talking about a topic. Your view that because people more generally aren't perfect, so people shouldn't "burden" themselves with thinking about it or reacting to anything leaves me with a bad impression of you.
People who are legit geniuses tend to have severe failings in other areas. No one has it all.
Hmm, the data I saw doesn't fully support this. That said, all of that data was from the 90s and 00s, so maybe both are true.
What you outline are the underlying reasons for why there was a shift in employment and gender roles, and the numbers I saw (which included e.g. the gender division of enrollment in engineering subjects and also university faculty in those subjects) were the results of those enforced changes several decades later.
As in, the intentions might not matter: by radically changing the roles (even if only unwillingly due to necessity) you enforce a societal change down the road -- which will not happen equally in a more affluent society where women "don't need" to work in "men's jobs".
It's more that it's finicky than it being limiting. Like a lot of exceptions to rules and things like that. It's still the preferred/best option for games programming though.
Does he have any training in language design whatsoever? Or is this some Elon Musk-esque situation where the tech press assumes that "smart people" don't need no stinking book larnin'?
He's shooting for the moon, I do hope he lands the landing as the ambition of creating a new language that works well for game designers is wonderful in an age where it is harder and harder for small sized studios to make it big(even among the bursting indie gaming scene)
But here is the thing, as he simplifies what C++ with less amount of code, the performance overhead increases. Developers use C++ because it's basically the most efficient programming language before getting into assembly code. I would love to see performance comparisons when he is done with his programming language.
Add another one to the C# train. It's an amazing language, and I wish a lot more things were written in C#.
There's already some cool C# projects, though. For example, one of the two main Nintendo Switch emulators is written in C# (and it's supposedly better than the other one, written in C++).
There's already some cool C# projects, though. For example, one of the two main Nintendo Switch emulators is written in C# (and it's supposedly better than the other one, written in C++).
It's really not that much different then other languages. It gets a bit more complicated when people start using higher level functions in C++ like classes. Also dealing with pointers and garbage collection is a pain where languages like Java does it in the background(at the cost of performance).
Demos are interesting for sure and I wouldn't say competition in this space is a negative thing. Not sure how many are actually going to use Jai though, obviously having proper FFI to support stuff implemented in other languages could help.
The most probable replacement for C++'s role in the long term would be Rust and it has already been used in certain companies tools. Not that it's saying much since Haskell and Ocaml also appear from time to time. Of course it's also possible that Rust proves to be too difficult for many, the same reason why we are stuck with crappy languages to begin with ;-)
The most probable replacement for C++'s role in the long term would be Rust and it has already been used in certain companies tools. Not that it's saying much since Haskell and Ocaml also appear from time to time. Of course it's also possible that Rust proves to be too difficult for many, the same reason why we are stuck with crappy languages to begin with ;-)
I seriously doubt that a new language can somehow help those who have currently difficulties programming games, unless it has a massive library of built-in functions typical for games. But even then, the average non-programmer wouldn't be able to do anything beyond the basics.
Plus, for those people, game maker (and other simplified game engines) exists.
Plus, for those people, game maker (and other simplified game engines) exists.
I mean, would you say that modern Russia, where domestic violence was essentially legalized last year and feminists get harassed by the government for "extremist activity, is more socially progressive than the west?
The USSR didn't have a sexual revolution spearheaded by women like in the US. Instead, it was passed into law for propaganda purposes, without a complementary revolution in attitudes toward women. From the USSR's perspective, you were only worthy if you worked, so even if you were struggling with six children and a husband with a drinking problem, you would not get sympathy. You were expected to work through it and do your duty as a citizen and woman.
This thing is in the making for years now. There are streaming sessions where you can see him implementing his coding language. It is a mix of C++ combined with ideas that make game development easier especially for in memory data structures (heaps) which are used a lot in games.
You know, this is what sometimes annoys me about "internet politics": you can't seem to talk about and analyze individual topics. I don't know nearly enough about USSR politics and history to judge its combined impact on being "socially progressive". I do know from several examples and incidents that modern-day Russia (an oligarchy) very clearly is not socially progressive, but again, I don't know all the reasons for that.
What I do know, and the only thing I talked about in this thread, is that ex-USSR eastern European countries have very significantly higher female participation in several math-heavy engineering subjects, both at the scientific level and in the private sector, than the vast majority of western European countries. This is not in any way, shape or form a value judgement on their entire societal structure. It's an observation on one particular aspect of it, which I offered in this thread because it provides a very compelling point of evidence that e.g. interest in programming is a result of societal, rather than inherently biological, factors.
I suspect visual scripting like Unreal's blueprint are the future of easier small game development for people who don't want or need to know the technicalities of C++ or other programming languages. The providers of the visual scripting languages are going to need to figure out systems and pipelines to keep the results efficient and discourage poor usage. Faster hardware will also allow for more wasteful tools and games which is actually a good thing.
AAA will need custom super efficient solutions until hardware powerful exceeds the drive to use it all up.
Until an learning AI can build games for you there's always going be some level of technical understanding but for creatives the further away that is from hardware specifics the better.
AAA will need custom super efficient solutions until hardware powerful exceeds the drive to use it all up.
Until an learning AI can build games for you there's always going be some level of technical understanding but for creatives the further away that is from hardware specifics the better.
Exactly what I came to post.I'm nowhere near his level of knowledge but this looks like a case of:
I haven't followed Jai's development in depth, but as far as I can follow, Blow wants to use this mainly for himself. Helping others is more of a secondary goal. In that sense, even if nobody else adopts this (and I agree, I don't see this spreading, even if it would fulfil all its goals with no downsides), he will certainly have what he wanted. And even if there are no efficiency improvements, one should never underestimate placebo effects. The human mind is rather weird.